Exile and Exaltation: A Brief Look at 100 Years of the Shared History Between Filipinos and Black Folks: A Lecture by Patrick Rosal

As if the Black imagination had hit a low point between Reconstruction and the Great Migration, the period between 1890 and 1920 has been called “the nadir” of African American history. But what if this era of Black culture was left out of history in order to preserve the American fantasy of imperialism and expansionism? What if, as a result of the distortion of the story of the Philippine-American War (c.1898-), Filipino and Filipino American history was lost along with its Black counterparts as well as crucial instances in which Black folks and Filipinos engaged in correspondence, mutual seeing, and the kinds of collaboration that threaten the white supremacist myths of the state? And how do we see each other in the 21st century? Are we now complicit in the forgetting?

In this talk, Patrick Rosal will discuss figures of the twentieth century like W.E.B. Dubois, Carter G. Woodson, Thomas Edison, and soldier-composer-conductor Walter H. Loving. Lecture material will be drawn from a prose book-in-progress about his mother’s arrival in America during the Civil Rights Era.